Number two conjures up nothing but nastiness for me, and this is no exception.  The largest single funding driver of Hillary's healthcare plan  is the discontinuation of tax cuts for individuals making over $250,000 per year to help pay for reform.  This represents, according to the plan, about $52 billion in resources to fund her initiatives out of an estimated need of $110 billion.  Not to go on too much of a tangent here, but this is totally a political move for maximum impact amongst her constituents.  This one item of her plan gets as much air time as any other part of it and has gotten her votes, no doubt, through the primaries, although at this particular moment in time, the rising tide seems to be lifting Mr. Obama's boat.  

As stated before.  I believe that anyone who benefits should also participate in paying for their benefits.  Of course the wealthy are going to pay more. At a certain level they use insurance as wealth protection which means they are willing to pay more to protect more.  They are probably more demanding on the system in terms of the level of care they expect, so they pay more there too. Plus, their wealth is spread out into the system both in their creation of jobs through building businesses as well as through their spending.

Fiscal Responsibility that Honors our Priorities (continued)

 To ensure that this is done in a fiscally responsible manner, the new investment will be funded in two ways:

2) Redirecting Tax Breaks

• Redirect Savings from High-Income Tax Cuts for Tax Breaks to Ensure Affordable, Health Care Coverage: The American Health Choices Plan will redirect the revenue gained from not continuing President Bush's income tax rate cuts and exemption increases (known as PEP and Pease) for households making over $250,000 to help finance health reform. While this small percentage of well-off Americans would see their tax rates returned to pre-Bush levels, the plan would offer tens of millions of Americans a new tax credit to make premiums affordable. Those tax breaks more than offset the increase in revenues derived from not renewing these provisions of the Bush tax cuts and capping the tax exclusion for health care for the highest income Americans (explained below), making the plan a net tax cut for American taxpayers.

• Making the Employer Tax Exclusion Fairer: The fact that health premiums paid by employers are excluded from workers' taxes (i.e., they are not counted as income) has benefited hundreds of millions of Americans and led to employer pooling of high- and low-risk workers. The American Health Choices Plan rejects calls to limit the tax exclusion for middle-class Americans who have negotiated generous coverage or for those whose premiums are high due to health status, age, or high local health care costs. However, at a time of limited resources, it is neither prudent nor fair to allow the portion of a high-end plan that is in excess of the typical Health Choices Menu plan to be tax subsidized for the highest income Americans. A high-income American would still get a tax break for the employer contribution to the cost of a typical plan, like the Congressional plan, and they could still choose to get additional high-end coverage. But given that the highest income American already receives a tax benefit for purchasing a quality plan that is about twice as large as what a typical American taxpayer receives, the choice by such high-income Americans to obtain additional high-end benefits should be at their own - and not the taxpayers' - expense.

Next up…..a few afterthoughts. 

In the meantime, congratulations.  If you have read the last 16 blogs, you have read Hillary's entire health plan and are probably more educated about it than 99.9% of the population.  And if you can remember any of it, you are way more educated than me because I can't remember what I did this morning, much less what I was writing about 16 blogs ago.